Microsoft helped the NSA bypass encryption, new Snowden leak reveals

Microsoft worked hand-in-hand with the United States government in order to allow federal investigators to bypass encryption mechanisms meant to protect the privacy of millions of users, Edward Snowden told The Guardian.

According to an article published on Thursday by the British
newspaper, internal National Security Agency memos show that
Microsoft actually helped the federal government find a way to
decrypt messages sent over select platforms, including
Outlook.com Web chat, Hotmail email service, and Skype.

The Guardian wrote that Snowden, the 30-year-old former systems
administrator for NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, provided
the paper with files detailing a sophisticated relationship
between America’s intelligence sector and Silicon Valley.

The documents, which are reportedly marked top-secret, come in
the wake of other high-profile disclosures attributed to Snowden
since he first started collaborating with the paper for articles
published beginning June 6. The United States government has
since indicted Snowden under the Espionage Act, and he has
requested asylum from no fewer than 20 foreign nations.

Thursday’s article is authored by Glenn Greenwald and Laura
Poitras, two journalists who interviewed Snowden at length before
he publicly revealed himself to be the source of the NSA leaks.
They are joined by co-authors Ewen MacAskill, Spencer Ackerman
and Dominic Rushe, who wrote that the classified documents not
only reveal the degree in which Microsoft worked with the feds,
but also detail the PRISM internet surveillance program. The US
government's relationships with tech companies are also included
in the documents, according to the journalists.

“The latest NSA revelations further expose the tensions
between Silicon Valley and the Obama administration,” the
journalists wrote. “All the major tech firms are lobbying the
government to allow them to disclose more fully the extent and
nature of their cooperation with the NSA to meet their customers'
privacy concerns. Privately, tech executives are at pains to
distance themselves from claims of collaboration and teamwork
given by the NSA documents, and insist the process is driven by
legal compulsion.”

In the case of Microsoft, however, it appears as if the Bill
Gates-founded tech company went out of its way to assist federal
investigators.

Among the discoveries made by the latest Snowden leaks, Guardian
journalists say that Microsoft specifically aided the NSA in
circumventing encrypted chat messages sent over the Outlook.com
portal before the product was even launched to the public.

“The files show that the NSA became concerned about the
interception of encrypted chats on Microsoft's Outlook.com portal
from the moment the company began testing the service in July
last year,” they wrote. “Within five months, the documents
explain, Microsoft and the FBI had come up with a solution that
allowed the NSA to circumvent encryption on Outlook.com
chats.”

According to internal documents cited by the journalists,
Microsoft “developed a surveillance capability” that was
launched “to deal" with the feds’ concerns that they’d be
unable to wiretap encrypted communications conducted over the Web
in real time.

"These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec
2012,” the memo claims, two months before the Outlook.com
portal was officially launched.

In a tweet, Greenwald wrote that “the ‘document’ for the
Microsoft story is an internal, ongoing NSA bulletin over 3
years,” and that The Guardian “quoted all relevant
parts.” The document is not included in the article.

About primary docs: the "document" for the Microsoft story is
an internal, ongoing NSA bulletin over 3 years - we quoted all
relevant parts

The Guardian revealed that Microsoft worked with intelligence
agencies in order to let administrators of the PRISM data
collection program easily access user intelligence submitted
through its cloud storage service SkyDrive, as well as Skype.

“Skype, which was bought by Microsoft in October 2011, worked
with intelligence agencies last year to allow Prism to collect
video of conversations as well as audio,” the journalists
wrote.

That allegation comes in stark contrast to claims made previously
by Skype, in which it swore to protect the privacy of its users.
RT reported previously that earlier
documentation supplied by Snowden showed that the government
possesses the ability to listen in or watch Skype chats “when
one end of the call is a conventional telephone and for any
combination of 'audio, video, chat and file transfers' when Skype
users connect by computer alone.”

RT earlier acknowledged that Microsoft obtained a patent last
summer that provides for “legal intercept” technology. The
technology allows agents to “silently copy communication
transmitted via the communication session” without asking for
user authorization. In recent weeks, however, Microsoft has
attacked the government over its secretive spy powers and even
asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court if it could be
more transparent in discussing the details of FISA requests
compiling tech companies for data.

"We continue to believe that what we are permitted to publish
continues to fall short of what is needed to help the community
understand and debate these issues,” Microsoft Vice President
John Frank wrote last month.

“In the past, Skype made affirmative promises to users about
their inability to perform wiretaps," Chris Soghoian of the
American Civil Liberties Union told The Guardian. "It's hard
to square Microsoft's secret collaboration with the NSA with its
high-profile efforts to compete on privacy with Google."

Earlier this week, Yahoo requested that the FISA court unseal documents
from its own FISA battle. The court ruling in 2008 compelled
Yahoo - and later other Silicon Valley entities - to supply the
government with user data without requiring a warrant.

“Blanket orders from the secret surveillance court allow these
communications to be collected without an individual warrant if
the NSA operative has a 51 percent belief that the target is not
a US citizen and is not on US soil at the time,”The Guardian
reporters wrote. “Targeting US citizens does require an
individual warrant, but the NSA is able to collect Americans'
communications without a warrant if the target is a foreign
national located overseas.”

During a March press conference, FBI general counsel Andrew
Weissman said that federal investigators plan on being able to
wiretap any real-time Internet conversation by the end of 2014.

“You do have laws that say you need to keep things for a
certain amount of time, but in the cyber realm you can have
companies that keep things for five minutes,” he said.
“You can imagine totally legitimate reasons for that, but you
can also imagine how enticing that ability is for people who are
up to no good because the evidence comes and it goes.”

Former CIA officer Ray McGovern expanded further on the subject
to RT, remembering the Bush presidency and how unsurprising it is
that this sort of breach of rights continues to exist.

“If you look at what happened when Bush, Cheney and General
Hayden – who was head of the NSA at the time – deliberately
violated the law to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant, did
the telecommunications companies cooperate? Verizon, AT&T…All
the giants did…the one that didn’t was Quest. And what happened
to Quest? Well, the CEO ended up in jail – and he still might be
in jail – on some unrelated charges.”

Later the Congress voted to hold everyone in an innocent light,
including the companies who were complicit in the spying. So
there is absolutely no disincentive not to engage in violating
people’s rights, McGovern warns.